


Won't Be Long Till I belong

by horriblemarc



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Gun Violence, Multi, Orgasm Denial, Prosthetics, title is from Shakey Graves 'unlucky skin' btw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-06 09:32:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4216602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horriblemarc/pseuds/horriblemarc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He left the Citadel in his rear view mirror, skin crawling with claustrophobia and nerves bundled painful tight. He skipped the wreckage, not wanting to look at it, not wanting to smell the corpses, not wanting to watch the buzzards pick apart the bodies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. diseased buzzard

**Author's Note:**

> First try at a Mad Max fic- any headcanons or ideas are super welcome! also HMU on tumblr, my url is rickyromans. Come talk to me! I have yet to meet anyone in this fandom.

Max was a survivor, and there was more under that title than met the eye. It didn't just mean he lived, it meant he fought for it- he took the high road and he fought for every inch he wasn't supposed to move. That had been true for a long time, since before the oil ran out and the banks closed up.

 

And worse, being a survivor meant that he didn't just survive, he wandered. Looked for things that challenged his survival because he no longer knew the safety of a home. Not that he jumped into danger for the hell of it, Max always felt like dangerous situations were drawn to him more than the other way around, but there was no one to argue his point to now, was there?

 

When they had made it back to the Citadel, Max was quickly reminded why he tended to stick to himself. The crowds reminded him of the angry mobs, in the beginning. Then the crowd of the Citadel's townspeople turned violent as they tried to be pulled higher by the car lift. Hands clawed at his shoulders, pushed him back. Max let them. He had no desire in him to follow the women up to the skies, he just wanted out of the suffocating sea of people.

 

It took longer than he wanted to get out, but he managed to find a car similar in build to his old Interceptor- he would have preferred that, but he was not surprised that it didn’t last the last charge to the Citadel. The new car was a Charger, an old model with new parts, tires lifted to keep it fluid on loose sand, as well as few changes Max wasn’t sure the purpose of.

 

He left the Citadel in his rear view mirror, skin crawling with claustrophobia and nerves bundled painful tight. He skipped the wreckage, not wanting to look at it, not wanting to smell the corpses, not wanting to watch the buzzards pick apart the bodies.

 

South was where his tires took him, in between the Bullet farm and Gas town, steering as far clear of both cities as he could. The voices didn’t question or torment him- in fact, they remained dormant, silent as they would have been in any sane persons head.

 

Two weeks later was when he stopped at a town, neighboring Gas and Bullet but further out, where news of the Immortan's Citadel had just reached them. Max stuck to the outskirts. That was where he did most of his trading for water and guzzoline anyway, that was where people kept their heads down, didn't find anything overly strange about a man with a limp who didn't speak.

 

He was staring down a man who was trying to charge him far too much for packaged protein bars. The man claimed he founds stacks and stacks of them in an empty factory, but if he truly had so many then Max knew the man would sell them cheaper, less desperate for good deal and more desperate for a quick one

 

That was when he heard two elders -Max honestly could not decipher their gender, and didn't really care- speaking about Gas town, about people eater, about how he was overthrown by _Joe's war boys_. Half correct.

 

The next part was what really caught his attention, because it wasn't about the wives, or the Immortan.

 

 _'Came right up to me, all but collapsed at me feet'_ , one said, and Max wondered what that meant, the person was talking about the thing like it was a diseased buzzard, or a limping coyote.

 

_'Missing uh leg he was, burned sumfin awful over the other 'alf of em.'_

 

Max tried to put the conversation out of his mind. It didn't matter, what mattered was getting nourishment and supplies before returning to his Charger and putting more distance between the whole ordeal he'd put himself through.

 

"Half gallon." He countered, and the man snorted.

 

"An 'alf gallon an that nice bracelet of yers."

 

Max glanced down at the paracord threaded around his wrist. He shook is head once, and the man rolled his eyes.

 

"A half gallon." Max croaked again, and the man threw his hands in the air dimly, grumbled for a moment, and nodded.

 

"But y'give me that guzz first, mate."

 

Max heaved a sigh, weighing his odds for half a second. There was the off chance the man would follow him back to his car, kill him and siphon the rest of his guzz from his Charger. But Max needed the protein, needed something besides lizards to keep his insides working properly. Lizards were too salty, they were going to get to his heart sometime.

 

Years after the world ended and he still had to look after his cholesterol.

 

Max grunted an affirmative, waved a lazy salute, and turned away from the man, taking the long way back to his car to get the half gallon of guzzoline. If only water was as cheap as protein.

 

\---

 

It was still morning, Max could tell because he hadn’t even begun to think of the heat yet. The sun was never pale, but it was dim in comparison of what it will look like in a few hours, and Max was thankful for it. His patience was always short, but bartering in the middle of the day never ended well for him; Always left him even more angry than he’d been in the first place.

 

Taking the long way back to his car would cost him energy, but he hoped it would be worth it for the solid food, that didn’t put up a fight when eaten. He kicked up sand as he went, making the imprints of his boots in the sand less obvious and trying to put the idea of _water_ out of his mind.

 

He’d healed from the torments of the caves when he’d first been taken by the war boy’s: the rubbed in scabs from the muzzle had flaked off, the cuts over his eye had healed. His new tattoo’s had stopped itching as well -which he still wasn’t quite sure about, but he’d seen another ‘bloodbag’ with his back decorated by a kind of label, listing his blood type before marking him property of the Immortan, so Max assumed he had the same. The brand on the back of his neck had gone down from an angry welt to just another scar, no longer holding the heat it used too, though it still ached.

 

His right hand was still immobile from the arrow that had pierced it- even after he’d yanked the shaft out, it must have completely wrecked the nervous system in his palm, because he couldn’t even twitch his fingers. Having something so utterly useless made him antsy, suddenly craving the use of his hand more than water, but there was nothing he could do to fix it.

 

Max was pulled from his mental assessment when he reached his car, parked inside a cluster of rocks with an orange, sand-caked tablecloth tucked over the parts that reflected the sun the worst. All in all, it was better camouflage than it sounded like, nearly invisible until Max was right on top of it.

 

He didn’t bother tugging the cloth off, just jerked open the trunk and grabbed an empty, five-gallon canister for the guzzoline, pouring out half a gallon into it before screwing it shut, closing his trunk, and returning to the town with the half-gallon in hand.

 

He kept glancing over his shoulder every now and then, to make sure he wasn’t being watched.

 

When he got back, the man had joined in the conversation with the two other townspeople. Two were howling with laughter, but the third one, the one who had initially been talking about the one-legged _thing_ , was pouting, arms crossed, body language irritated.

 

“It’s fine, i’m tellin’ ya, jus’.. Different.” They were insisting, but it only made the other two howl louder.

 

“S’not fine, it’s right crooked, it is!” The old man laughed, and got swatted on the arm because of his words.

 

“Shut yer fuck, it just baked in the sun too long, s’all.”

 

Max cleared his throat, making all three of them jump.

 

“Guzzoline.” He rasped, and the old man heaved a big, dramatic sigh.

 

“Took yer long enough.”

 

Max hummed noncommittally in response, pouring his half gallon of guzzoline into the man’s rusted oil can grudgingly.

 

"Awful small 'alf gallon." The man complained, and Max raised his eyebrows, but didn't bother reaching for the shotgun strapped to his good leg.

 

"Ajax, you give that boy wha' he paid you for." One of the elders said, and shot Max a wink, who stared, unused to being paid pleasantries for so long that he didn’t remember how to respond.

 

"Yeah, 'e might take more than yer traded 'em if you don't 'urry." The second one chimed in, before saying in a whisper that they must have thought was quiet, "Like a finger."

 

That sent them into more fits of laughter, and the old man grudgingly handed over a case of protein bars, so brittle they were more like granola, but real food, nonetheless.

 

Max managed to turn all the way around before one of the elders -the one who seemed to have a one-legged burn victim of a pet- grabbed the back of his jacket, tugging down his collar to reveal the Immortan's brand on the back of his neck.

 

Max had his shotgun out, loaded and cocked in a heartbeat, wheeling to point the barrel of his gun at the elder’s face, itching claustrophobia burning its way up his neck and making him feel like he was suffocating slowly.

 

"Don't." He warned, resembling a coyote who had had his fur rubbed the wrong way.

 

The elder sniffed like they were offended.

 

"Yer the one, then, I take it?" They asked, and the old man interjected, batting the barrel of Max's gun down with a careless hand.

 

"He ain't the one, just some crooked old  Joe's boy out’a job."

 

"What one?" Max asked carefully, letting his gun stay pointed in the sand but keeping it in his hand. He liked the weight of its reassurance, even if he had no real plan to use it, it was a bluff that no one would dare to call him on.

 

"Oh, don't get 'er started." The old man groaned, but the other two shushed him until the elder could continue.

 

"Well," The elder said, with the hair of someone who was about to make a short story unreasonably long.

 

"Just a week and a 'alf ago it was, and I was out a little past Gas town, because I like to get my trades done 'afore it gets all hot."

 

"It's always hot," The old man grumbled.

 

"Belt up, Ajax."

 

"Well I was jus' leavin' Gas town when I bumped into a boy. A boy! Healthier than I've seen in ages, even if it wuz hurt as hell."

 

"She's jus' tryna be nice when she say’s it was uglier than a robber’s dog."

 

"I'm tellin' the story, Ajax."

 

"Missin' 'alf his leg he was, his chest burned fierce ugly."

 

Max wasn't sure what this had to do with him, plenty of people ended up down on their luck so far out in the desert. The only reason he didn't interrupt to ask was because he feared it would drag the story out even longer.

 

"One of Joe's boys it was, all that paint all over his face. He was talkin’ so much, I swear he said more words than there’r grains of sand."

 

"That is by far the worst exagger-" Ajax began to say, and Max cut him off with a clipped "Stop."

 

The elder who was telling the story beamed at him.

 

"He was ravin' about Joe, and Valhalla, and breeders, and a big _feral_ boy helpin' 'em."

 

_Oh, fuck._

 

That was Max's que to leave. He doubted many people would be loyal enough to Joe to actually defend the man after his death; nevertheless he got an uneasy feeling in his gut, and his gut was much less treacherous than his brain. It did not tell him lies or trick him into seeing things, it only told him basic human instinct.

 

He slid his shotgun back into the holster on his leg, secured it, and shouldered his goods and his empty can of guzzoline, took a few steps back before turning away, ready to be out of the strange town and away from this old woman’s ghost stories.

 

Unfortunately, he wasn't not quick enough.

  
“Bloodbag!”


	2. burnt metal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to know whose more crazy, the war boy insisting that you give him a ride, or you, after you agree with him.

Max didn’t turn around at first, in fact he picked up his steady pace just a little more, shoulders hunching. He wasn’t given the chance to even get past the city wall, however, because a second later there was a sound, like boots in the sand but _different_ , mixed with a metal clinking like an engine with something stuck in it- and then there were hands on his head, fingers scrubbing through his hair excitedly and when he froze at the touch, there was suddenly someone in front of him instead of behind, butting his head into Max’s eagerly.

 

“You just keep showing up, don’t you?”

 

Max’s eyebrows tilted up, frown deepening into something more confused as he took a few reeling steps back. It didn’t seem to be the reaction the boy was looking for, but Max needed a second, needed to take a step back, needed to actually _look_ at the kid who was better for wear than a corpse, but not exactly on the good side of ‘healthy’.  

 

“You.” Max croaked, eyes raking over the boy’s pale form, assessing. A nasty burn covered part of his chest and shoulder, a tiny bit licking over his jaw as well- his head seemed okay, and he seemed to have use of both his hands, but the further down Max’s eyes went, the more confused he got. One leg of the boy’s pants was still tucked into his boot, full of tools and whatever else he kept in the pockets, but the other had been cut short, fabric clumsily tucked into a leather strap, which trailed and shifted into enough metal and wire that Max couldn’t quite translate every individual piece, but it was clear what it was: A replacement leg.

 

From above the boy’s knee down, it was metal, clunky and obviously not very used, from the way the boy leaned more heavily on his good leg. The awkward, mis-matched footsteps suddenly made since.

 

“You’re supposed to be dead.” He managed, and took another step back, shaking his head slightly. He wasn’t sure whether what he was seeing was real, or just another symptom of his insanity, but either way, it _hurt_ , bad like too much sun, bad like getting dragged through glass, bad like getting chained up and left in a cage to rot.

 

He had just assumed the war boy was dead, accepted that when the rig flipped he would die, no questions asked, no need to watch it happen.

 

It still didn’t seem to be the response Nux was expecting, however, because the war boy began to look confused as well, taking the steps forward that Max had put between them, drawing them back together. Max couldn’t take his eyes off of the way the boy limped when he did it, metal leg not quite comfortable yet.

 

“You remember me, right? You witnessed me, you all saw-”

 

“You’re supposed to be dead!” Max barked, louder than he had been in a long time. Something like anger welled up in his chest, and Max barely remembered what that felt like, but it was so familiar, so warm. He didn’t bother trying to shrug the emotion off.

 

“You fucking died you _slanger_! Flipped the whole crooked rig just to get that lug off of you, you stupid, stupid _boy!_ ”

 

Max dropped his wares, letting them hit the sand carelessly.

 

He hadn’t shouted in centuries, it had been lifetimes and lifetimes since he had had a reason too. Maybe shouting over the wind, maybe exuding energy for a purpose, but this.. This was mindless, emotional. Costly, in the desert, but apparently worth it, because Max couldn’t stop, didn’t mind the way Nux’s face had hardened.

 

“I had a bullet with his name on it, if you’d given me the-”

 

“What, the time?” Nux interrupted him, lips curling into a grin that held no humor. The boy’s voice was low and scratchy, dehydrated and quiet but defiant.

 

“You had time, after I flipped it. You could have come back for me. You could have been there before the _buzzard’s_.” Nux’s words stung, but Max didn’t know how to react with pity, didn’t know how to say he was sorry. So he growled, took a step forward, hand wrapping around the back of the war boy’s neck to pull their foreheads together with a dull thud.

 

“You sacrificed our time when you couldn’t hold out for another second while I loaded my shotgun.” He hissed, and Nux surprised him with more strength than he expected, large hands shoving Max away, causing him to stumble.

 

“Don’t pretend to be the hero, _fool_. You ran. Ran like a panicked, loony _dog_ with his tail between his legs."

 

Max opened his mouth, shut it. Opened it again. No words came out, no defense for Nux's shouting. He couldn't argue that, it was exactly what he had been doing, running. He hadn't stopped running for ages. How the boy had pinpointed him so accurately, Max didn’t know, didn’t really care, because the words stung no matter whose mouth they came out of.

 

He became aware of the eyes on them, and he took another step back, straightened up.

 

"Bloodbag-" Nux's voice had changed, Max could see in his eyes that he hadn't really meant to say what he did, but he couldn't take it back then, could he?

 

He turned around, scooped up his things with his good hand and strode quickly back towards the gates, hoping Nux wouldn't follow.

 

"Bloodbag!"

 

“It’s Max.” Max didn't look back when he growled over his shoulder, just kept walking, kept running away just like he was suppose to, like it was expected of him to do.

 

Nux didn’t really seem interested in letting him go, however,  because a beat later those same uneven, mismatched footsteps were behind him, long legs catching up with him in a heartbeat. Max could hear the war boy breathing, labored in a way that suggested he shouldn't be moving around at all. Max didn't slow down because of it- in fact he hoped it would cause the boy to fall behind before he reached his Charger.

 

"Valhalla spit me out."

 

Max didn't respond to the war boy's words, but he shuddered to think the amount of times he had thought something very well along those lines, that dark thought that he should have died already. It felt wrong, to hear the words from his mind come out of someone else’s mouth.

 

"I saw it, green and beautiful and shinier than chrome. But.. it didn't see me."

 

Nux was panting, words coming out irregularly as he walked beside Max, making him feel the annoying urge to slow down, or offer to help the boy, or something equally ridiculous, considering that Max was trying to get away.

 

"D'you think it's because the Immortan died? Do you think that someone else is workin' the gates now?"

 

Max heaved a sigh, stopped walking and turned fully to face Nux.

 

"What do you want." He rasped, his voice coming out softer than he wanted, but Max couldn't take it back then. He didn't even know how this kid was alive, how he'd survived the roll over, how he'd survived losing a leg and mercy knew what else- on top of being a drained half-life pumped full of borrowed blood. Frankly, a large part of Max didn't want to know.

 

Nux seemed surprised that Max was talking to him, like he'd briefly forgotten Max was a real person and not just the back of a person to talk too. That, or maybe he was just surprised Max was stupid enough to waste breath on the question he asked.

 

"I want to come with you, Max."

 

He sounded so genuine, so optimistic. Max had to look up slightly to meet Nux's gaze, the lanky war boy standing inches above him, but the way Nux slouched in on himself made him seem smaller.

 

"Why." Max rasped.

 

"Because I'm supposed too." Nux said as if t where obvious, and Max wondered why the hell the kid thought that.

 

"Because I've been going out of my mind here, trapped in one place- all the people are great! But the cars are shit, half of 'em aren't fixable. Some of ‘em.. Some of ‘em don't even have V8's."

 

All of the words seemed to flow out of the boy in one lung-full of air, and Max raised his eyebrows, trying to look like he didn't sympathize something painful with the kid, trying to look like he wasn't already harboring a weak spot for the has-been war boy.

 

"Insult a guy, talk his ear off, expect him to help you." Max grumbled, and shook his head, the words 'who raised you' nearly slipping off his tongue before he caught them, replacing their space with another exasperated sigh.

 

"Mercy." He grumbled defeat slowly, dropping his chin to his chest, and he earned a clumsy, possibly affectionate head butt that made him see stars before Nux was pulling back out of his personal space.

 

"Chrome!" The boy crowed, and Max only withheld rolling his eyes because it seemed like too much wasted energy. Instead, he turned back on his path to his Charger, awkwardly juggling the gas-can and protein in his good hand, the other limp in the pocket of his jacket.

 

Max thought maybe he didn’t have to be as angry as he felt, maybe the anger was just an easy exit to get away from another, displaced emotion; because he couldn’t be that angry, really, considering how quickly he’d offered Nux a ride.

 

Though that seemed part of his nature- as much as he hated people and distrusted them as a whole, there was still.. There was still a good part of him that couldn’t look a begging man in the eyes and leave him to rot in the desert. Maybe it was the ex-cop in him, maybe it was just that he was weak-willed when it came to other people.

 

Walking back to his Charger, Max kept his pace a little slower, found things to distract himself into spending longer out in the heat for the sake of Nux keeping up a little more ease. The boy kept rambling as they walked, talked about the city they’d left behind- about the woman he’d found, about how _familiar_ she was, on and on he went, to the point that Max began to wonder why he’d even agreed to Nux accompanying him.

 

When they reached the Charger, Max dropped the supplies in the sand again, yanked open his trunk and painstakingly loaded everything back into the trunk, yanking off the camouflage sheet and clumsily folding it with one hand before tossing it into the trunk as well.

 

He wasn’t aware Nux was watching him until he looked up to shut the trunk, and caught the boy’s big, blue eyes staring at him critically.

 

“How come you aren' using your other hand?” Nux asked, and he sounded curious, but he had a look in his eyes like maybe he already had a pretty good guess why Max wasn’t using it.

 

Max narrowed his eyes, walked around his car swiping his arm over the windshield, ridding it of a layer of sand that had collected before yanking open the driver’s seat door. He climbed into the car and shut the door carefully, not really wanting to answer. Nux followed suit, scrambling into the passenger seat barely a second later, and he still had an air about him, like he was expecting an answer. It set Max’s teeth on edge.

 

He tried to ignore it for another second, cranked his car carefully, revved the engine once in case it too had collected more sand than good for it.

 

Glancing at Nux, he frowned at the boy, who was still leaning slightly into his space, lips parted, eyes still expecting, _expecting_  an answer.

 

“Doesn’t work.” Max said shortly, and immediately regretted it, because he could just see the kid getting ready to ask a million more questions.

 

“Got shot. Stopped working.” He held his hand up for Nux to see, and was disgruntled when the kid immediately reached out, grabbing his hand and inspecting the bandages around it.

 

“I could make you a new one.” Nux offered, and Max didn’t even want to know what all that meant, what all it entailed.

 

“No thanks.”

 

“We could match!”

 

The boy thumped his metal leg against the floor of Max’s charger for emphasis, and Max briefly wondered how the boy could sound so excited about something as morbid as matching prosthetics. Maybe it wasn’t as morbid as his mind made it out to be, but he still didn’t like it.

 

“No. Thanks.”

 

 


	3. clever hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max is rapidly running out of ways to cope with the stray he picked up, and he's not sure what's going to happen when he actually runs out altogether.

After a few hours of talking himself all but hoarse, Nux finally got himself back to the topic Max had been most curious about, but hadn’t wanted to bring up himself. He didn’t want to make the kid relive whatever the hell had happened after the war rig flipped, didn’t want to dredge it up in the worrisome fear that Nux was only talking to keep his mind off of it.

 

Back in the old world, Max had had a station-enforced therapist that described some of his symptoms as PTSD. Now, in the desert, Max just called it crazy- but he could take a guess that whatever Nux had gone through to get out alive.. Well, he must have done it out of survival instinct only, pure, animal instinct pulling him to get out of there. Whatever it was, Max thought that the kid might have more than enough on his plate to cope with.

 

“-must’v thought I wasn’t done yet, y’know? Like, maybe I still have something left to do, here.” Nux was saying, and it boggled Max’s mind slightly- it had taken him eons and centuries to arrive to that conclusion himself, after so long wandering. And then this kid, spit-balling in the shotgun of his Charger had just stumbled over the secret like it was nothing.

 

Max grunted in confirmation, unsure of whether or not Nux expected an answer, but feeling the need to let the kid know that he’d just said something very, very important.

 

He could feel the war boy’s eyes turn on him, but the kid never stopped talking, long, mismatched legs propped up on Max’s dashboard, arm resting outside the window like it was the most comfortable he’d ever been in his life. Maybe it was.

 

“Anyway, I probably should have seen it coming, I mean, smashing Rictus’ skull with an entire war rig probably earned me a few more years in the sun, even if.. Even if i only survived because of..” Nux trailed off, and when Max glanced over, the kid had pulled a stripped piece of wire out of his pockets and was playing with it, nimble fingers teasing it into one shape and then coaxing it straight again.

 

“How’d you end up in the Barter town?” Max croaked, and Nux met his eye for a moment, before turning back to the wire in his hands.

 

That time, Nux was a little slow to respond. Max couldn’t blame him.

 

“Stuff kept happening. I was in the rig, and then I was in Valhalla, and then I was in the rig again, and there were.. Uh, there were raiders dragging me out. It gets in an’ out after that.”

 

Max didn’t want to imagine what the raiders had thought they would do with him- it made sense that they would come, surely the wreckage they left behind would look tempting to a good many people. The raiders must have made it there before the cannibals, then, considering how close they were. Max considered that much a stroke of luck. Cannibals never gave their meals too much time to go bad, and he imagined a fit boy like Nux would have made a few too many meals to pass up.

 

“They uh, they thought i’d be useful. Didn’t do much, just slapped some tape on my cuts and my.. Uh, what used to be my leg.”

 

He could feel the kid wince, no doubt at that memory- how the boy had survived getting infected in those early stages, Max didn’t know, but the boy had had rotten luck all his life, maybe at the beginning of this new one, the sun had offered to give him a slightly better hand of cards the second time around.

 

“It took me a while, they chained me up to some booted bikes to fix ‘em, and I uh. Managed to get away.”

 

Some part of him was soothed down slightly when the ‘use’ the raiders put him too was first labeled as fixing things. Black thumb, of course. His thoughts were interrupted by Nux’s voice again. This time, the boy seemed less nervous, more indignant, narrowing his eyes slightly.

 

“Riding a bike with one leg s’harder than I woulda thought.”

 

Somehow, unexpected, Max made a small, amused snort, lips curling up to show his teeth in something resembling a smile. It hurt a little bit, muscles he wasn’t used to using being stretched and contorted, but that angry feeling had passed, and his body was still working through everything that had happened, having Nux in his passenger seat- a giddy kind of energy had filled him up.

 

He composed himself readily from the small slip, though he could already feel Nux staring at him again. Max had half the mind to say something irritable like _you never seen a smile before_ , just to kill the mood, but when he glanced over, the kid wasn’t just staring, his eyes were still fixated on Max, open, straight up oggling.

 

“Do that again.” Nux demanded, and Max realized that the kid wasn’t making eye contact with him, not even a little bit- his eyes were a little lower, aimed at his lips.  

 

“Make me.” He huffed, and Nux openly gaped at that.

 

“Don’t know anything funny.”

 

Max made a _hm_ noise at that, and if a little bit of satisfaction leaked into it, only the sun was his witness. He tightened his hands on the steering wheel, forced himself to look out at the sand in front of them rather than the boy sitting to his right; he tried to move his attention, to make his focus follow suit of his eyes and fall back to the road in front of them, but his attention remained focused entirely on the boy beside him, and he found his voice before Nux had a chance to say anything else.

 

“You’ll just have to think real hard, then.” He offered, and almost smiled again when Nux made a noise in the passenger seat, something between embarrassment and laughter.

 

\---

 

They hadn’t talked much when they’d both been on the war rig- in fact, Max hadn’t been talking much to anyone then; but the more time they spent together, the more Max realized that the kid was actually.. Well, he was actually a real person, and not just another charge, another person to keep track of and keep safe.

 

Nux was clever, whenever he got too restless he would unstrap his prosthetic leg and fiddle with it, sometimes in seemingly constructive ways, and some times more destructive; sometimes altogether useless: once Max watched him spend two hours curling a slim coil onto one of the metal rods that held it all together, only to pull it off as soon as he’d managed to get the whole thing around the rod.

 

He was easily excited, too, as Max had already vaguely known, but he hadn’t been in the direct fire of the boy’s energy until the second day they’d spent crammed into a car together, and Nux discovered a small, nearly transparent gecko, barely the size of his little finger. Max hadn’t cared at first, he’d let the boy scramble around in shotgun, crawling into the back for a brief period of time before he lost track of the lizard entirely, at which point he heaved a big heavy sigh and straightened back into his own seat, bored now that he had nothing to distract him.

 

“How anything can hide in this stupid tiny car is a miracle of Valhalla.” Nux had pouted, and Max grunted.

 

“Not the car’s fault.” He patted the steering wheel with his good hand lazily, silent apology to the car for Nux’s outburst. It was a good car, it didn’t deserve that kind of abuse. And it certainly wasn’t as small as Nux made it out to be, the boy was only bitter because his long legs had limited space to stretch out.

 

“ _There_ you are!” Nux had suddenly gasped, and Max had largely ignored it, assuming the boy had found his lizard again, but a second later Nux was all but in his lap, one hand curled through his hair for support while the other reached out and plucked the small lizard off the window just next to Max’s head.

 

He made a small disgruntled noise, face pressed into the boy’s neck, one of Nux’s knees was riding up his thigh, just barely missing kneeing him in the crotch entirely. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but most of his complaints had died in his throat anyway. Nux didn’t seem bothered at all by their sudden closeness, to the point that he didn’t move even once he’d gotten the lizard. Instead he stayed, awkwardly sprawled across Max’s lap, arm moving to drape around Max’s neck as he let the lizard scurry over his nimble fingers.

 

“Comfortable?” Max asked a little later, once he’d managed to get the strangled edge out of his voice.

 

Nux didn’t even glance up when he hummed, “Yeah.”

 

Max didn’t know what to do with that, he’d expected his sarcasm to get the boy moving, but either Nux didn’t catch it or he just didn’t care, because he all but ignored it, pink tongue poking out in concentration when the lizard tried to balance precariously on his fingertips.

 

“Are you?” Nux asked suddenly, and Max didn’t know whether the kid was joking or not, if he was actually _testing_ Max or if he just thought that since Max had asked, he should ask Max as well. Mercy, if there was anything to crash into, Nux probably would have made Max crash at that point, if not before.

 

“..Why not.” Max hummed, and let his shoulders fall from their tense hunch, relaxing back into his chair, using the palm of his bad hand to gently nudge Nux’s head back, letting the boy rest on his shoulder so he could actually see what was in front of them.

 

They’d driven another good half hour like that, Nux sprawled around Max with his lizard while Max tried to remove himself from the situation entirely, if only for the sake of his last remaining ounces of sanity. It wasn’t until the lizard escaped again that Nux finally moved, following the lizard back to his side of the car. Max’s breath had been a little uneven for a few minutes after that; but by the time the sun slipped below the horizon altogether, he was alright again.

  
Of course, by that point, Nux deemed it appropriate to stretch across the seats and push his head into Max’s lap, prosthetic leg safely tucked under his seat. Max made a surprised noise that exaggerated how surprised he actually was -not at all surprised, really- but he shifted slightly when the boy’s arms snaked around his waist. The boy took no further time getting comfortable before falling asleep like that, and Max braced himself for another few hours of making absolute certain that he was as still as possible- to the point that he detoured in the sand a few times just to make sure they were going over the smoothest path. 


	4. Aim, Fire, Reload

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux continues to be confused by emotions and Max learns a new trick to make his aim better

Nux had a tell. Well, not so much of a tell, as an interesting little habit, no doubt formed over ages of being trained to do so; whenever they stopped, to stretch their legs or piss or just take a look around, Nux always returned to the driver’s side first, before seeming to remember himself and crossing around to the other side of the car, sliding into the passenger seat.

 

The boy never looked grumpy about it, didn’t seem overly displeased with the fact that he was in shotgun instead of driving, but it was an obvious reaction to muscle memory, habit building in his head that he was a driver; after all, that had been most of his life, hadn’t it?

 

So next time they stopped, once Max had finished impatiently fiddling under the hood -nothing was wrong, he just like to keep the sand out as best as he could- he jerked his chin towards the driver’s side, knowing Nux had already been watching him.

 

“You drive, m’tired.” He said, shutting the hood gently with his good hand and circling back to the passenger side. Nux didn’t wait a second more to climb into the driver’s seat, and Max almost smiled when the boy had to pull the chair back a good six inches so his knees wouldn’t bump the steering wheel sharply.

 

The kid started the car and pulled it forward easily, not even missing a beat considering it must have been a different kind of car than he was used to driving. Max let himself relax into the passenger’s chair, though his eyes watched the cracked mirror outside his window, antsy despite himself.

 

He divided his attention into two, equal subgroups, one for watching the horizon behind them, and one that watched Nux, drank in every little movement, every facial expression, anything that Nux did, Max absorbed.

 

Warm, happy energy just exuded from the war boy, and Max wondered if he should have given him the wheel sooner. Maybe they were more alike than he thought, maybe Nux needed a wheel to keep him sane just as much as Max did. Not that it was really sanity it gave him, more like an easy exoneration, like bribing a priest into giving you absolution. Not worth anything, no monetary value, but something to put you to rest, however briefly.

 

It had been far less quiet since Nux joined him -relatively speaking- considering how many people Max would have assumed were slowly learning about the waterfall in the Citadel. They hadn't passed anyone, and hadn't seen the hide of anyone who was looking to poach or steal from them. It was an odd feeling, something that didn't quite connect in Max's restless brain, and he couldn't keep himself from checking the rear view mirror every few minutes as well, just _waiting_ for someone to sneak up on them.

 

Before anything happened, Max felt himself getting more tired, nodding off in the heat that was made comfortable by his rolled down window, wind whipping past his face and through his hair. His eyes closed for one second, and the he was asleep, curled against the car door, shotgun in his lap, bad leg stretched out in front of him stiffly.

 

He woke up barely two hours later with a jolt, bad hand pressed against his forehead and his breath coming out in clipped gasps. Nux was frowning at him, leaned back in his seat and barely looking at the road at all, one hand wrapped loosely around the wheel.

 

"You talk a lot, in your sleep." Nux said, and Max cringed slightly, uncomfortable but dimly aware that he would have had to have the conversation with Nux at some point, considering how they had become unofficial travel companions. "I mean, for someone who barely talks when he's awake, it's kinda weird."

 

Before Max could say anything to defend himself, Nux piped up again, leaning across the middle seat and reaching a hand out towards Max, who surprised himself by not flinching away.

 

"You frown too, it makes a little line right," Nux's words trailed off slightly, and Max felt the pad of the boys thumb swipe down in between his eyebrows, like he had already mapped it out in his mind. “There.”

 

Max did his best not to lean into the touch, but his sleep-heavy eyes slipped closed for a second with the contact. When he opened them, Nux was pulling away, settling back into the drivers seat.

 

"..What did I say?" Max asked, catching Nux's expression. It wasn't hurt or angry, but he definitely wasn't his usual bubbly self either, and Max was beginning to get worried over what he could have muttered in his sleep.

 

Nux didn't respond right away, and Max's stomach dropped slightly- Nux was the talkative one, the only time he got quiet was when he didn't know how to react to something, or how to say something without being overly blunt.

 

"Not much." Nux finally said, and Max groaned.

 

"Nux."

 

"..Whose Jessie?"

 

_Oh boy._

 

Max paused, opening his mouth and then shutting it again; what was he supposed to say about Jessie? She was his, she was in his head and tucked inside a small, safe place in his heart and she would always be those things. He’d worn both of their rings for as long as he could, but they’d been stolen from him quickly, thought to be worth something because of the gold in his and the diamonds in hers.

 

Nux seemed to feel the shift, and when he glanced over again, Max met his eyes hopelessly.

 

“Wife.” He managed, before looking down at his ring finger, despite it having not held their rings for a long time- sometimes he still expected them to be there, expected them to scratch against the hood of his car when he ran his hand over it.

 

“Got ‘er killed.”

 

He could tell from Nux’s face that the boy was taking a minute to digest what he’d said, from the way his expressions kept changing; unfortunately Max wasn’t exactly well-versed in reading other people’s emotions from their faces, and the majority were lost. He picked up a few, considering how much time he’d spent with Nux: mainly the ‘awkward empathization’ face that he was used to getting from people, before everyone lost their minds, and people dying became regular.

 

“Don’t say you’re sorry.” Max bit out, and Nux raised his eyebrows at him, confused.

 

“Why would I do that? I didn’t kill her.”

 

Max was liking this kid more and more every day, though he’d probably have to keep that information to himself.

 

“No reason. Hold the damn wheel while you drive.”

 

Nux had gotten distracted, using his knees on the wheel rather than his hands, and the boy rolled his eyes at Max’s words, but exaggeratedly dropped one hand onto the top of the steering wheel, turning his head back to look somewhat stubbornly at Max.

 

“How many wives did you have?”

 

Nux seemed so genuine when he asked that Max could have laughed, if he wasn’t still warm from sleep and ultimately more exhausted than he had been when he first shut his eyes, worn down by the reminder of what he’d done.

 

“One.” Max grunted, and and he was winding up for the inevitable question about that -mercy, he had no clue what massive storm of questions Nux had reeling in his mind- when he glanced out the side-mirror, catching the glimpse of something disappearing below the horizon behind them.

 

“Behind us, to the left, y’see that?” Max sat up, rubbing his good hand over his eyes before grabbing his shotgun, reaching to cock it before realizing that he had to readjust his grip entirely thanks to not having two hands any more.

 

Leaning out of his window, Max tried to see the dark spot again. Seconds dragged by, and then he caught a glimmer of something, but this time it was far to their right, riding up on an outcrop of scraggly rocks. One biker, at least. Max used his teeth to set his gun before resting it on the hood of the car, leaning out further until he could get a clear aim at the bike, which was weaving in and out of sight.

 

_Crack_.

 

Max fired once, but from the soft plume of dust that went up from the rocks, he figured he didn’t hit his mark. He hadn’t had steady hands in ages, but his bad aim was beginning to get ridiculous.

 

He slid back into the car, where Nux’s lips had turned up in a grin, no doubt excited to be back on his turf, back to being a war boy.

 

“Did you get him?” Nux asked, eyes darting back and forth from the road to his mirrors, keeping tabs on the bike as best he could.

 

“Nup.”

 

He thought he caught Nux roll his eyes, but Max didn’t call him out on it- they were a little busy on that front, and he wanted the kid’s attention on the road, not on an argument; he bit his tongue, clumsily re-cocked his shotgun and leaned out the window again, this time disturbed to find that there were two bikes, one on the left and one on the right. Max thought he could hear a third engine, but it must have been the wind, because there wasn’t another vehicle in sight, and they were on flat lands, save for the shaky outcrop of rocks.

 

That time, he took his time on his aim, regrettably aware of Nux’s hand wrapping around his calf, most likely trying to ensure that he stayed at least partially inside the car and didn’t just fall out of the open window altogether.

 

The hand on his leg steadied him more than it should have, anchored him down and gave him a good reason to fire properly- he didn’t like killing people, not after everything he’d done, but there were people worth killing for, and the boy grinning manically in the driver’s seat of his car, well, at some point he’d become worth it.

 

Inhale, aim, exhale. Max steadied his shotgun again on the hood of the car, squinting to see the biker still following them up on the rocks.

 

_Crack_.

 

The bullet went straight through the man’s helmet, Max watched his head jerk back, watched him fly off his bike like he was a puppet and someone had just tugged his strings backwards.

 

From inside, Max heard Nux whoop loudly, excited by the act, and when Max ducked back into the car, Nux’s hand was _much_ further up his leg, nimble fingers squeezing his thigh, rewarding.

 

Max’s brain was too hyped up on adrenaline to really consider it further than that- a reward for getting his aim right. Nux was grinning at him, and Max didn’t quite grin back, but there was a wild spark in his eye, a remnant of a look he used to wear often, when he was less tired, less haunted.

 

The still-revved bike from the poacher Max had killed shot off of the rocks, and Nux swerved strongly to one side to avoid being crushed by it. Max could hear some edge of the bike _ding_ heavily against the hood of the car on his side before the bike began skidding through the salt.

 

The next bike caught up to them, close to their back tires, keeping low enough that Max didn’t want to shoot at him in fear of hitting his own gas tank. Quickly, he tossed Nux his shotgun, leaning over to grab the wheel with one hand. The boy understood immediately, cocking the gun and locking the gas pedal before turning around in his seat.

 

Nux was good, practiced in fighting from a moving vehicle. He was too tall to really stay behind the seat, but he was efficient- shot off three bullets that cut through the glass of the back seat window, and blew out the front tire of the poacher’s bike.

 

They were clear, or at least, there was a split second of thinking so, before a low-wheeled truck whipped out in front of them, where it must have been hiding behind the rocks. Nux scrambled to slam on the brakes, sending them into a strong drift on the sand. They skidded too far, loose sand working against them- and when the wheels finally stopped squealing for purchase, they were just parallel with the truck, crushing the truck’s side mirror and ramming into the side of the bed heavily.

 

Max had a pistol out before Nux had even slammed on the breaks, and he didn’t hesitate to fire off six shots, arm stretched across Nux’s chest to ensure even the recoil wouldn’t touch the boy.

 

Two people had been in the front, a man and a woman, and when his eyes focused on them, they were both dead, the woman bleeding from the neck, and the man bleeding from the shoulder and the temple. His bullets had hit their mark.

 

Just like that, everything was quiet, and Max blinked. There was no more shouting, no more engines running besides their own. He clicked the safety back onto the pistol, tossing it to the floor of the Charger, and was about to straighten up when he felt Nux’s fingers threading through his hair, dragging Max forward and pressing their lips together eagerly.

 

It was dry at first, they hadn’t drunk much water and their lips were chapped from the sun- and then Max’s brain caught up with him, reacted fluidly, crawling closer and shoving Nux up against the car door, mouthing over the corner of Nux’s lips teasingly.

 

Nux was eager, hungry under his lips, but Max could feel his inexperience, the way the boy stuttered under his lips, hands stilling completely in his hair once Max licked over the boy’s lower lip, coaxing Nux’s mouth open slowly.

 

His heart was still beating in his chest from the adrenaline, the rush of it all going to his head and making him feel dizzy, though Nux may be more to blame for that last symptom then adrenaline

 

“We,” Max pulled back slightly to speak, but only got one word out before Nux was following him, pressing their lips back together, and Max’s eyes closed again, moaning into the kiss like they’d been doing it for hours.

 

He dragged his teeth over Nux’s lower lip, drinking in the way the boy squirmed under him, the soft whimper that came out of the war boy’s chest. Lazily, he dragged his hand up and down Nux’s chest, fingers brushing over the scarification of an engine block as he went, pressing over lithe muscles, squeezing Nux’s side playfully.

 

It was a few more minutes before Max pulled away again, and Nux looked a little too dazed to do anything about it, a pink tint high on his cheeks, contrasting his blue eyes almost as much as the salt and the sky all around them.

 

“We need to get out of here.” Max said, knowing full-well that they should have gotten out much sooner, should have looted anything they could get and high-tailed out, before anyone else tried to take advantage of the rocks to their left.

 

“O-Okay,” Nux hummed, and mercy, he sounded _dreamy_ just then, and Max realized he was still pressing the kid up against the car door with his hands splayed over Nux’s chest.

 

Max noticed he felt warm as well, not just blushing but flustered, his body reacting to something he hadn’t allowed himself in years. In a small break of self-control, Max leaned forward and pressed another, impossibly soft kiss over Nux’s kiss-dampened lips, which had turned pink from the torment Max gave them with his teeth.

  
Nux hummed quietly into it, barely able to react before Max was pulling away again, kicking open the door to the passenger side and crawling out, quick work to be done before they could get moving again.


	5. heat waves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max starts something resembling a prank war and also realizes that he sucks at reading people.

Max woke up thinking it was going to be a bad day. It had to be, he’d slept cramped up in the driver’s seat and because of it, his leg was stiff and aching. For a brief movement, he considered whether it would hurt less if he just sliced off the whole appendages.

 

The sky was still dark, but it wasn’t because it was still night- when Max glanced out the window, he was surprised to catch inky clouds gathering in the sky. Some kind of storm was brewing, though they wouldn’t know what kind until it was on top of them.

 

To make it worse, Nux wasn’t in the car when he woke up, which sent Max into a small panic, shoving the door open and stumbling painfully out of the car only to find Nux pissing two yards away, still yawning and rubbing his eyes.

 

“You’re awake.” Nux hummed over his shoulder, and Max was rapidly learning that somehow, spectacularly, Nux was not a morning person- he liked to have time to wake up slowly and enjoy the coolest part of the day. Max assumed it was because Nux had never really had the luxury to enjoy anything before, when he was ruled by the Immortan.

 

Then Nux seemed to catch on that something was off, and he frowned at Max, sticking out his lower lip the way he always did when he was thinking.

 

“Are you okay?” He asked, and Max wondered how awful he looked, if his pain was that transparent. Just standing on his leg made every muscle from his knee to his hip ache, and teetered more fully on his good leg, unwilling to put that much weight on the aching muscles but incapable of avoiding it.

 

“Yup.” Max said, and Nux frowned further, tucking himself back into his pants and turning around fully.

 

“For a big tough guy, you’re kinda bad at hiding pain.” Nux teased, and walked back to the car, poking Max in the ribs as he went. Max made a deep, whining noise in the back of his throat, more petulant than he’d allowed himself to be in ages. He was rewarded for his efforts by a giddy laugh from Nux, and his own lips twitched up in satisfaction.

 

“You drive, i’m buggered out.” He said, and Nux, again, eyed him critically.

 

“You slept almost all night.”

 

Max nodded once- that was right, he’d started sleeping better once he’d really figured out he could trust Nux not to do anything stupid, but that didn’t change the fact that his leg was too stiff to work a gas-pedal, not to mention in too much pain to focus on anything well. If they got jumped again, they’d be fucked with Max driving.

 

“If you don’t want too-” He started, glancing over his shoulder, unsure at what point he got so soft on Nux but unable to stop them. His words drew another laugh from Nux that pulled at Max’s heart.

 

“Don’t get yer panties in a twist, i’ll drive.”

 

“My panties aren’t-” Max started, turned around to narrow his eyes at Nux, and then dropped his head back in defeat, squinting at the pale sun. “Never mind.”

 

Nux snickered, opening the trunk and pawing through their supplies. They’d gotten an oddly good amount of useful things from the poachers that had tried to jump them- several gallons of guzzoline that fit neatly into the back of the trunk, as well as ammunition, knives, some canned food, and two good jugs of water.

 

On top of that, Nux had stripped some of the metal off of the bikes, and had been fiddling with it. He wouldn’t show it to Max, and he always stashed it back into the glove compartment when he was done. Max wouldn’t admit that he was curious, so at that point he had no idea what Nux was working on, but it was nice to see the boy busy, not moping or antsy to be behind the wheel.

 

That day had been an interesting starting point. Max had never dragged dead bodies out of a truck and into the sand to be consumed by coyotes so _cheerfully_ in his whole life. Not that he made a habit of doing that, but whenever people tried to sneak up on him.. Well, clearly there was only one outcome, and he was the one still standing.

 

They had left the bodies to the land, to feed the salt and the bugs and whatever else found them before the sun rotted them too bad.

 

Nux hadn’t talked about their kissing much, but the air had changed around them; Max was more comfortable, somehow, and Nux certainly hadn’t been shying away from him. They hadn’t touched each other since that day, but neither of them regretted it- they had just been working off excess energy, getting it all out of their systems. That was what Max told himself.

 

Max turned to follow, standing next to Nux and leaning against the boy lazily, humming quietly when the stance was reciprocated- he watched Nux grab a canteen of water and take a sip.

 

“Are we gonna stay here till the ‘arvo?” Max asked, eyebrow raised, as if Nux was dragging his feet about it. Nux’s lips turned up, and Max figured there would be a point when his dry sarcasm stopped making the kid laugh, but it hadn’t failed him yet.

 

“Depends, you gonna walk without looking like an old dingo that chewed it’s foot off?”

 

The kid was really catching onto the whole sarcasm thing.

 

“Don’t look like a _dingo_.” Max grumbled, and shut the trunk behind Nux, leaning against it stiffly and screwing his eyes up for a second, leg still aching. He could feel Nux’s eyes on him, but he didn’t feel like putting effort into trying to hide his pain, not if he was going to get called a _dingo_ either way.

 

Before either of them could move away, Max felt Nux’s hand slip under his shirt, nimble fingers squeezing his side. He opened his eyes, and found Nux’s face right next to his, blue eyes wide open and watching, gauging his reaction.

 

He leaned against the tail of the Charger more heavily, curious to see what Nux thought he was starting, but the boy didn’t move from that, save for his hand slowly sliding up and down his side. Max realized it was an echo of the same movement he’d done days ago, after they’d gotten jumped.

 

“What’s it called?” Nux asked, not taking his eyes off of Max’s, and Max’s eyebrows drew together, unsure what his boy was asking.

 

“What?”

 

“The thing. With your mouth.”

 

Max realized that whatever Nux knew about kissing, he didn’t actually know about it, even if he’d ever kissed someone before.. Well, if he didn’t know what a _tree_ was called, Max could figure the war boy had never learned much that didn’t directly relate to him being useful to Joe.

 

“Kissing.”

 

“Kissing.” Nux repeated, and Max couldn’t look the boy in the eyes anymore, instead he lowered his gaze to look at Nux’s scarred lips, pink around the white lines that stung them.

 

There was a pause, and Max was aware of both the pain in his leg, and the warmth in his chest from the way Nux’s hand continued to run up and down his side.

 

“Kiss me.” Nux said, and his voice was a little higher, unsure of his words despite the stubborn set of his jaw; the words surprised Max into silence -though maybe that was just his natural state- and in the seconds it took for him to realize that Nux _meant_ it, the boy had grown impatient.

 

“Please.” Nux said, no, asked, and that was the last kick Max’s brain needed.

 

It was slower than the first time, mainly because Max still had some stupid form of trepidation that the kid didn’t know what he was asking for; he knocked his forehead gently against Nux’s, noses bumping together- another pause, that time, he could feel Nux’s breath on his lips.

 

He placed a small kiss over Nux’s lips and pulled away, straightened up, heaving himself off of the tail of the car. A small smirk playing on his lips.

 

He wanted to do more, so much more to Nux; he wanted to drape the boy over the trunk and kiss him senseless, until the only thing Nux could even _think_ about was Max. But the look of surprise on Nux’s face was worth the price of restraint.

 

“That wasn’t-” Nux started, before something set in his eyes, and just as Max moved past Nux to limp his way back to the front, he caught a dangerous glimmer in those oasis blue eyes.

 

By the time Max was swinging into the passenger seat, he had a bad feeling that his teasing Nux was going to bite him later.

 

He collapsed into the passenger seat, grunting when he pulled his bad leg into a better position, stretching it out in front of him as best he could. The muscles were painful tight in his thigh, making his whole leg feel stiff. When Nux crawled into the driver’s seat, Max was struggling to massage his leg properly with only one hand, trying to work the tremors out.

 

Thunder rolled across the sky, somewhere behind them, and Max became aware for the first time of the electricity in the air, forming currents so obvious they should have been tangible. He hadn’t grown up in any Australian deserts- he’d always stayed in places where the roads were asphalt, but he’d grown used to the desert, and by then, the salt was like a second skin to him.

 

“You don’t look okay.” Nux started the Charger, and Max caught the boy’s eyes dart towards the glove compartment subtly; whatever metal scraps he was working on, he _really_ didn’t want Max to see it.

 

“My leg got shot.” Max said through gritted teeth, before hurriedly adding, “Few years ago. Supposed to have a brace for it.” He’d kept up with the brace for a while; even stopped and looted a drug store for a replacement the first time he’d lost it. But eventually everything was covered in sand and he’d run out of time or patience to try to find another.

 

His words seemed to have a minor effect on Nux -the benefits of traveling with an ex-war boy, Nux rarely reacted to violence in a grossly sympathetic manner- if anything the boy only seemed minorly impressed.

 

“It still works?” Nux asked, and Max raised his eyebrows, made a disbelieving grunt that mostly conveyed ‘ _you've seen me walk, right?_ ’ without actually wasting words on such an answer.

 

Nux shrugged it off, Max’s sarcasm somewhat lost on him.

 

“The Organic fixed a few people with bullets in ‘em, but most of ‘em got infected.” The war boy explained, bringing the engine to a purr before pulling the Charger forward, letting it warm up before speeding up.

 

“Got their limbs lopped off, sometimes replaced, sometimes.. Not.” The way Nux said it, Max got the feeling that the latter option was much worse.

 

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he fell silent, and for once Nux didn’t seem to feel the need to fill the quiet, because he didn’t talk again until the sun had climbed distinctly higher in the sky, the quiet only interspersed by the boy’s occasional coughs.

 

When the sun was directly above them, hot enough to make heat shimmer off of the hood and Max shed his jacket, Nux was back to talking, words shifting messily between things from the Citadel and Barter town, and every now and then Max’s ears tuned in to hear the name _Capable_.

 

He wasn’t a jealous person, especially not of teenaged girls, but he hadn’t really put together the thought of how much time Nux and Capable had spent together; Max tried not to let it bother him, because really, it was _nothing_ to be worried over, but he found himself shifting closer to Nux anyway, knocking his leg against the boy’s knee.

 

Nux didn’t react to the contact immediately, but slowly, Max felt the boy melt into the touch, relaxing further into his seat and dropping a hand from the wheel to rest on Max’s thigh.

 

Max let the touch sooth him, despite the fact that the muscles in his leg were still too tense, it felt good to have Nux so close to him. The comfort stopped, however, when Nux’s fingers slowly started moving, massaging Max’s thigh as he continued to talk.

 

“-swear to Valhalla, it was like I knew her, even though I don’t remember why.” Nux’s brow furrowed, and Max was pretty sure he had been talking about the woman in Barter town who had found him, but he wasn’t really listening, distracted by the heat from the sun and the warmth from Nux’s fingers digging into his thigh.

  
It felt good, strong hand digging into the muscle of his thigh, faux casual; Max didn’t let himself react to it, not wanting to let Nux know just how good it felt, in case he stopped. Or, worse, in case this was the beginnings of the revenge Max had brought on himself. 


	6. engine splutter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MAINLY JUST PORN

Max had gone from not reacting, to _trying_ very, very hard not react, to trying not to openly moan as Nux’s movements went from gentle massaging to downright filthy palming him through his trousers. It was messy, due to the fact that Nux was still pretending to be casual, driving with one hand. Max was torn between wanting Nux’s full attention on him, and wanting his boy to _absolutely_ stop touching him and pay attention to driving properly.

 

Nux’s hand was _just_ teasing him through his pants, not even completely touching him and Max was biting the inside of his cheek not to moan. It had been long, too long, since he’d even jerked off, and he didn’t think he could remember the last time he’d actually had sex. The worst part was that he wasn’t even closing to breaking his dry spell yet, he just barely had Nux’s hand on his crotch and he was already getting ahead of himself.

 

“Eyes front.” He rasped when Nux began letting the car veer to one side- it wouldn’t have made a difference two days ago, but they’d gotten out of the flat lands, and steady wind had created heavy dunes in the sand. If they didn’t follow the one path, Max wouldn’t be surprised if they could manage to flip if they hit one of the dunes wrong.

 

His words -or more likely, the acknowledgement of what was happening- brought a pink tint to the war boy’s cheeks, and Max wanted to take a moment and enjoy the view of Nux, driving clumsily with his lower lip in his teeth, pale cheeks flushed; but Max couldn’t quite get his eyes to focus proper, not with the heat sinking down his belly.

 

Less than a minute passed before Max couldn’t hold back a whimper, barely a strain on his vocal chords, but it was gunshot loud in the quiet of the car. He hoped, briefly, that it was below the purring sound of the engine, except that Nux reacted to it loud and clear.

 

Nux’s hand moved to the side _just right_ , palming up Max’s cock with a roughness that felt like mercy compared to the teasing he’d done before, and Max pressed the back of his good hand over his mouth, suppressing a loud moan.

 

“Feel good?” Nux asked, and Max’s eyes tilted up in confusion, glancing towards Nux because yes it felt good, but he could hear the mischief in his boy’s voice.

 

“Harder.” Max instructed instead of answering, voice lowering in an attempt to keep it from wavering.

 

Nux reacted obediently, shifting his grip slightly and squeezing Max’s cock through his trousers. Max moaned loudly that time, legs squirming in an attempt to find more friction, but there wasn’t enough room in his seat to lift his hips or grind into Nux’s hand.

 

“Good,” Max panted, gnawing on the side of his thumb to keep from whining again.

 

Nux’s driving was edging on erratic, and Max was dimly aware of the wheels swerving back and forth, but he couldn’t even bring himself to say anything about it, not with Nux’s other hand slowly palming him up.

 

Heat was crawling up the back of his neck and up his chest, and Max’s breath was rapidly coming out more and more heavily, moans thick on his tongue as he squirmed in his seat, half-way wishing he could reciprocate the pleasure, despite how aware he was that Nux’s driving would indubitably be even worse if he was the one being touched.

 

“Nn,” Max moaned, “Nux.”

 

He was getting closer, embarrassingly easy but not able to draw it out either- he wanted to cum, wanted that release Nux was rapidly pulling him towards.

 

“Yeah?” Nux asked, casual as could be, and Max closed his eyes, letting his head thunk back against the top of the seat.

 

“Nux, I’m gonna..” _Cum, i’m gonna cum_. Max just had the time to think, before all of the pleasure and warmth was gone, and Nux’s hand was back on the steering wheel. Max glanced up, brow furrowed, painful aware of the tent in his trousers that was suddenly being ignored.

 

“What are you gonna do, Max?” Nux asked again, his voice awful casual and his lips stretching into a beautiful, dazzling grin that would have made Max’s heart jump, if he wasn’t squirming in his seat, panting and horny and bordering on pissed off.

 

“..Strangle you.” Max scrubbed his hand over his face, weighing his options between finishing himself off and ignoring the tent in his trousers until it went away.

 

“That ain’t very _historic_ of you.” Nux grinned, pulling a frown out of Max, before he tilted his head towards the war boy and mouthed over his pale neck languidly, stretching slightly to kiss the boy’s pulse point. It was more a lousy form of revenge, but he hummed in satisfaction when the boy shivered under him.

 

His cock was still throbbing in his trousers, but Max opted to ignore it, not wanting to give Nux the satisfaction, even if it did leave him horny and jittery for the rest of the day; he liked the feeling of Nux tilting his head away, giving him more room to move his lips over his neck.

 

The car settled back on a singular, firm path once Nux had two hands on the wheel, and Max took advantage of it, shifting in his seat in an attempt to make the stiffy between his legs more comfortable before licking a stripe over his boy’s neck, smirking against the crook of Nux’s jaw when the boy gasped quietly from the contact.

 

\---

 

It had been a day since Nux’s revenge, and Max hadn’t quite burned off all the energy from not being allowed to orgasm; it was an odd feeling, to have _excess_ of anything in that wasteland, let alone excess of energy. Max had always been good at adapting, learning the land, taking advantage of whatever he was given and putting it to use. Nux was just another thing to adapt to, though he was infinitely more complicated than Max was accustomed to; considering how long he’d been in isolation,  and he constantly found he had to keep on his toes.

 

It was dark out, yellow moon calling up coyotes to howl mournfully, battling with the thunder for dominance over the sky, Nux was behind the wheel again, and Max was leaning against him. Every few minutes, Nux would prompt him again to say something about how the world used to be. Max had been mumbling about aquariums, about the big one in Sydney- he’d already clumsily had to explain to Nux what fish were, how they’d gone extinct when all the water dried up.

 

“Big cages of water, bigger than you can imagine,” Max was saying, “Full of fish so big, they could swallow you whole.”

 

Animals weren’t that big any more, most of them were malnourished and never got bigger than that, save for a few of the reptiles that had thrived horrifically in the desert heat. Desert toads became massive with all the warmth and salt- but the lack of food and water negatively affected almost everything else.

 

“How come they got so big?” Nux questioned, and his voice had taken on the same low tone as Max’s quiet one, both of them pulled into the drowsy feeling the earth around them had already decided on.

 

“Born big. Fed well, we used to have extra of everything.”

 

Nux hummed at that. “Were there small ones too, runts?”

 

The moon was illuminating everything, making the sand look dreamy and the sparse clouds look haunting and milky. Max was half way through an awkward sentence when five dusted, low-cut cars began to speed towards them. They must have been in the horizon for a while, unnoticed between the darkness and the conversation.

 

Max should have been immediately fearful of having been crept up on so efficiently, his survival instincts should have kicked in; several things _should_ have happened. But they didn’t. Nux swerved hard, hooking a hair-pin left and trying to get around the cars. Their opposers already had built-up speed, however, and the one closest to them turned sharply with them, ramming it’s nose into the back bumper of their car.

 

Max could feel the cabin rock, screech-grind of metal on metal making Max wince slightly, it was minimal damage compared to what could have happened, but it wasn’t good. Shots rang out, and when Max checked he realized one of the cars had a mounted tommy gun with a dark figure behind it.

 

“Shit, shit, shit, shit-” Nux was hissing through gritted teeth, and Max realized that the war boy must have picked up on the foul words he always mumbled to himself.

 

Shots dinged against the bumper, and Max held his breath for a few seconds, expecting for their engine to explode- but none of the shots could have hit it, because the car continued to be in Nux’s control.

 

“Where did they come from?” Nux asked, and Max shook his head, he didn’t know. The intensity of the situation was an amazing form of relief on the tension that had been jittering in him since the day before, and it gave him a sort of feeling he wasn’t used too, or more accurately, he hadn’t felt in ages.

 

Before. Before Jessie, back when he was a kid, he didn’t have anything to take care of but himself. There had been that recklessness, borrow-his-foster-dad’s-porsche-for-a-joy-ride kind of restlessness that he hadn’t felt in ages, and for good reason.

 

But there he was, with Nux tense beside him, obviously pumped full of adrenaline and nervous energy, and Max saw the perfect opportunity for revenge.

 

“We need too- I don’t know if I can out run them.” Nux was saying, and when Max looked over his shoulder, the cars were all around them, mounted tommy gun kicking bullets into the salt just behind them.

 

Max rummaged, pulled a rifle out of the foot space in the passenger seat, checked the bullets. He couldn’t count how many shots the tommy gun was firing, too much noise around him to think on it, but there was a steady fire behind them, and then there was a click loud enough for Max to hear. It must have needed a re-load, and Max took that opportunity, standing through the sunroof and  raising the rifle, stabling it in the crook of his shoulder and firing twice before ducking down.

 

Fingers reached for bullets to re-load before he caught the tommy-shooter toppling off the top of the car, sliding into the salt. One of the cars pulled off, seeming interested in picking up their fallen comrade.

 

“You can.” He said to Nux and dropped the rifle back into his lap, and leaned over to wrap his hand around the crotch of Nux’s trousers, squeezing his cock once, drawing a shuddered gasp out of the war boy.

 

“Max.” Nux said, and he sounded like he was trying to steady himself, like he was trying to warn Max, but there was that undertone of want in his voice.

 

“Do you want me to stop?” Max asked, palming Nux slowly. The boy was trying to focus, eyes tracking between his mirrors and the sand in front of him.

 

Nux breathed in sharply, and Max could see him struggling for a moment, between reason and the way his cock had twitched in interest under Max’s hand.

 

“N-no.” Nux finally breathed, and Max felt a slow, wild smile curling on his lips.

 

“Don’t let them catch up.” He said, as if Nux would ever, and then shifted in the seat, sitting back before leaning down, pushing his head into Nux’s lap and mouthing over the tent in the boy’s trousers.

 

“I,” Nux gasped when Max’s lips found the bulge in his pants, and Max felt the engine growl as Nux’s foot pressed the pedal down all the way. “I won’t.”

 

Max gripped the seat with one hand for balance, dragging his tongue over the growing bulge in Nux’s trousers before mouthing over it, warm breath permeating the fabric easily. He could feel Nux squirming under him, trying to sit still but unable to remain completely unresponsive.

 

Another gun shot fired, hitting the mirror on Max’s side, and Nux ducked his head slightly; Max felt the car swerve to one side violently, and he didn’t question where Nux was going- it didn’t matter, he trusted the boy to get them away.

 

His teeth grazing over the boy’s trousers earned Max a low moan from the war boy.

 

“Max.” Nux said again, and that time it wasn’t warning, it was reverent.

 

Max took that as more than enough incentive, and scrambled to tug down Nux’s fly, pulling the war boy’s half-hard, flushed cock from his trousers. He licked his palm before wrapping his fingers around Nux’s cock, jerking it hard and fast with no build or mercy- it drew a wild moan from Nux, and if Max had stopped to look, he would have seen how the war boy was just barely managing to steer, shaking hands white-knuckled around the wheel, face flushed already.

 

Engines revved behind them, and headlights peeked over the edge of Nux’s window, the black cars slowly creeping up on them, gaining ground. Max was aware of it, but he the only time he stopped was to replace his hand with his mouth, wrapping his lips around Nux’s cock and bobbing his head up and down, sucking a little more lazily until the boy was fully hard.

 

Nux was moaning loudly, heavy-lidded eyes still checking the cars behind him, befuddled mind still working to get them away. Two cars came up on either side of the Charger, having successfully caught up with the intention of crushing them, and Nux let them, let them get within _inches_ of his sides before braking hard, squealing back as the two cars crashed into each other at a dangerously fast speed. One went up in flames, and the other turned over, spitting out the corpse of its driver through its newly-broken windshield.

 

“Max, Max, oh, shit-” Max could hear Nux above him, and he briefly pulled away, admiring the war boy’s cock- it was rigid and flushed, thick where it pushed up against Nux’s stomach, and Max licked a stripe up it slowly, tonguing Nux’s slit until the boy was squirming under him, whimpers coming out in the form of pleas spilling from his scarred lips.

 

In his head, Max figured the explosion had taken out the two cars that had caught up to them, and he could hear the engines of the other three roaring -too close- around them, surrounded, and he briefly paused his actions, knowing Nux would get them out but figuring the war boy might need a little incentive as well- Nux sounded like could barely _think_ with the heavy, hot feeling in his stomach caused by what Max was doing with his tongue.

 

He pulled his lips off of Nux’s cock again and that time, he turned his head, letting his teeth scrape over the length of it, and Nux whimpered again, but Max felt the car lurch forward again nonetheless.

 

The excitement and the fear and the _noises_ coming out of Nux were driving Max crazy, but he didn’t reach a hand down to help himself, far more interested in exacting his revenge on the war boy first.

 

Max slid his mouth back over Nux’s cock, and sucked on it a little faster, pulling Nux closer to orgasm- something happened behind them, and Max heard another crash of a car that wasn’t theirs. Nux relaxed slightly after that, and Max figured the boy was gaining confidence, because one hand moved from the wheel to tangle in Max’s hair.

 

He pulled off of Nux’s cock, and grabbed the boy’s hand, pushing it back against the wheel with a growled, “Steer right, boy.” despite how he didn’t stop to even watch the boy nod, already wrapping his lips around the boy’s cock again.

 

That time he pushed his head down until the tip of Nux’s cock was pressing into the back of his throat, already leaking pre-cum and begging for release- Max made himself gag on it, let his throat constrict and close around Nux’s cock.

 

“Max! Oh, _fuck_ , Max, please, I-I’m gonna-” Nux’s bone box didn’t ever seem to cease chatter, it appeared, and Max enjoyed the way Nux rattled on, moaning his name, all but worshipping by the time Max felt thick, warm cum drooling into his mouth.

 

Max eased off, swallowing Nux’s cum and using his hand to jerk the kid for another minute, going slow and working off all the last shivers and shakes of Nux’s orgasm, pale eyes watching the boy with something close to adoration as he watched Nux pant and gasp.

 

“That-” Nux started to say something, and trailed off again when Max swiped his thumb over the head of his cock, making him moan again, over-stimulated.

 

Max checked the speedometer, watched the needle shake over the eighty mark. Nux hadn’t slowed down by a mile, his heel pressed hard into the gas pedal.

 

He tucked Nux back into his trousers, licking his lips and sitting up fully. There was only one car left, and with it’s broken ranks, Max sat up just in time to see it slow down and fall back behind them. It was a risk not to hunt them back, Max knew there was a good chance that once they organized themselves, their opposers might track them down again. But getting farther away from them interested Max far more.

  
“-was scary. And great. And-and-” Nux hadn’t stopped gripping the wheel, and their speed hadn’t dropped so much as a mile. Max reached his hand up, dragging his thumb over Nux’s cheek. It made Nux stiffen up slightly, and Max thought he’d done something wrong, but then Nux was taking one hand off the wheel again and clumsily grabbing the back of Max’s neck, dragging him into a kiss. 


	7. over heated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> max is a sweetheart but oh my god he does not understand the term 'pep talk'

They hadn’t stopped driving that night- Max had pushed Nux into the passenger seat and stayed awake in order to put more distance between himself and their newly-risen opposers. Nux chattered for a while, but between the nerves of the chase and the orgasm Max had given him- well, sleep was catching up with the war boy quickly.

 

When the kid was finally asleep, slumped against the window, hugging his displaced metal leg like a teddy bear, Max had the quietness to realize what he’d just done. Stupid, stupid brain, ignoring his instincts- he could have gotten them both captured, or worse, killed. He was supposed to be the smart one, at least in terms of survival. He was supposed to be calm, on the right side of eager-to-live, not whatever had taken over him to pull a stunt like that.

 

But sucking Nux’s cock _just_ when he knew it was most dangerous, it had been.. Well, it had been better than surviving. It had been reckless, it had been stupid, but it had been living. Max didn’t really remember what living felt like. He remembered survival, he remembered instincts, but _living_ , truly behaving as if he were alive and human rather than some tired dog avoiding its deathbed.. It felt good.  

 

Max didn’t like it, didn’t like the over complications of his once very simple world. But every now and then, when he was going through the cold sand so quickly that he could feel the engine heating up under his hands, he’d glance over at Nux- blue eyes shut comfortably and scarred lips left just slightly open, all long limbs and pale skin and _familiarity_. It made him feel a little better about the state of complications in his world.

 

‘Better’ wasn’t exactly ‘good’, seeing as Max had only known Nux for a few weeks, had only even spoken to the boy in the past.. What, week and a half? It felt wrong, but maybe he was latching onto the war boy as much as Nux was to him. Maybe they just.. Needed someone.

 

Not the healthiest, but then, Max didn’t really remember what healthy was, either.

 

\---

 

It was hot outside, the sun rising steadily in the sky when the V8 motor finally overheated enough that Max had to pull over and slow to a halt. Nux woke up slowly when they stopped moving, blinking his eyes open and rubbing the sand from them clumsily before turning to Max.

 

“Why’d we stop?” He asked, and Max realized he no-longer felt uncomfortable being caught staring at the war boy- though, considering he’d just had Nux’s cock in his mouth some odd hours before, he figured that wasn’t entirely unexpected.

 

“Engines hot.” Max said, and Nux nodded easily. Max stepped outside, watching over the roof of the Charger as Nux clumsily hopped on one leg out of the car, before letting himself down heavily in the sand to strap his metal leg back on.

 

Max didn’t want to waste water on cooling the engines when they weren’t being actively pursued- his paranoia told him to get going as fast as the good, but they were in flatlands still, and as long as he kept a weathered eye on the horizon, no entourage of cars would be able to sneak up on them again before they could get the engine cool again.

 

So he popped the hood, using the sheet of metal to cover the engine from the powerful sun slightly, offering it shade while it cooled before limping around the car to Nux, sitting down heavily beside him in the baked salt.

 

Nux’s construct of a leg was interesting: out of leather, at the top, the boy had made a kind of mold for what was left of his leg, which folded around the sides and pressed against the still bandage-wrapped skin. Max wanted to look at it closer, but he was sidetracked by noticing that the bandages on Nux’s skin must have been left unchanged for days, and were no longer clean.

 

Standing up, Max batted at Nux’s hands to keep the boy from continuing to put his leg on. He rounded his Charger again, pulling open the trunk with his good hand and digging around in it’s contents- they were running low on supplies, and would have to stop for them soon, but they still had the necessities, being water and guzz and some sparse amounts of food.

 

He rooted around for a moment, pulling out a canteen of water and a shirt that was at least slightly more clean than the bandages around Nux’s leg.

 

When he shut the trunk, Nux was sitting on the ground, fingers fidgeting with the strap of his metal leg, his oasis eyes glued on Max.

 

Max didn’t offer an immediately explanation, just trailed back to the war boy and sat down again, slinging the clean shirt over his shoulder and setting the canteen down in the sand in between his legs.

 

“S’gonna get infected.” Max pointed a finger at Nux’s leg, and the boy’s fingers tightened on the strap of his metal leg a little more carefully.

 

“How do I make it.. Not -do that?” Nux asked slowly, obviously having not completely picked up on Max’s intentions yet, and Max wondered if the war boy had ever seen anyone successfully pull through getting infected without them dying in the process. The chances were low.

 

“Gonna keep it clean, keep bad stuff out.” Max explained, trying to make it a healthy dose of _scary_ without actually making the kid worry too much. He didn’t want Nux to think he was going to die any sooner, even if it _was_ a miracle that Nux hadn’t kicked the bucket already.

 

“Oh.” Nux said, and Max privately thought that the war boy didn’t really understand him, but he didn’t let an ounce of exasperation leak into his voice.

 

“Can I unwrap your leg?” He asked, meeting Nux’s eyes, and the war boy chewed on his lower lip, worrying the scarred skin between his teeth for a moment before nodding jerkily.

 

“Can’t make it much worse.” Nux finally said, which didn’t sound much like a vote of confidence towards Max, but he took it as better than nothing- after all, he wasn’t exactly a doctor. He was trained in a few field emergencies, medical being one of them, but that had been a long, long time ago.

 

He shifted closer to Nux, and pulled the boy’s stump leg into his lap, not wanting to get excess sand in the wound. The bandages had been tied off expertly, and Max briefly wondered if Nux had done it himself as he began to undo them.

 

“Old lady helped patch me up a little better.” Nux said quietly, and Max raised his eyebrows, not looking away from his work, but assuming that Nux meant the old woman who had known him all the way back in Barter Town.

 

“She did a good job.” Max said, and Nux nodded vigorously as Max slowly peeled the bandages off of the end of Nux’s leg, half expecting to find it cleanly sliced off.

 

What he found, was slightly different.

 

Skin stitched shut over obviously shaped muscled, smoothed over bone. Max almost didn’t understand for a moment- that kind of medical procedure should have been forgotten centuries ago. But then he remembered the woman’s weathered face- she would have been alive in the old world, old enough that she had to be smarter than Max. Maybe she had been a surgeon back then, maybe she’d kept her mind a little sharper than Max had managed to keep his.

 

It must have been a little sloppy, the old woman couldn’t have had many of the correct tools, but she’d closed it off, stitched it shut. A few of the stitches had been ripped, but it was still endlessly better than what Max had expected.

 

“She did all this?” He asked Nux, glancing up at the boy, who nodded again, lips curling up into a proud grin when he repeated Max’s words.

 

“She did a good job.” The war boy repeated, and Max stared, perplexed for another moment before shaking himself.

 

“Don’t got anything to fix stitches. Clean bandages will have to do.” He said, and Nux nodded once, brave.

 

Max briefly thought of the thick hook that was attached to the IV line on the shoulder of his jacket, but a needle that size would likely do more harm than good- on top of that, Max didn’t have any threads thick enough to keep the reddened skin together.

 

He pulled away the rest of Nux’s old bandages entirely, figuring if they let them bake in the sand most of the bacteria on it would get cooked off. Tugging the clean shirt off his shoulder, Max used his teeth to start a rip, then pulled along the seam, yanking the threads apart until he had a small, thick strip, which he pulled off and clumsily dampened with the water from the canteen.

 

Max grumbled and frowned as he ran the dampened cloth over the stump of Nux’s leg, damp shirt pulling away dirt and grime and sweat from the past few weeks. When it was as clean as Max could get it, he turned to the remnants of his shirt and tore it into more useful strips, long and wide. He tore about three off completely, and clumsily re-wrapped Nux’s leg, trying to replicate the patterns of the old bandages he’d taken off, despite only having one hand.

 

Nux had to help, tightening some of the strips when Max couldn’t and tying it off, but together they managed to make it decent.

 

“There.” Max said when he was done- his work was obviously slightly cruder, but clean, and with hopefully slightly less chance of becoming infected.

 

“Buzzards will ‘ave to stop circling you soon.” Max grunted, and straightened up, closing the canteen of water and balling the remnants of his shirt into one hand, as well as Nux’s old bandages.

 

When he looked up, Nux was staring at him again, fingers fidgeting nervously with each other.

 

“What?” Max huffed, hoping he hadn’t completely broken the kid by showing him kindness- he’d thought they’d already worked through Nux’s stage of being completely surprised by being show kindness.

 

“S’just..” Nux mumbled, and then ducked his head, fingers reaching up to rub at the tumors in the crook of his neck- the movement had to chafe the scabbing burn along his chest, but Nux didn’t show any sign of pain.

 

“S’just what.”

 

“I.. Dying is supposed to be an honor. Or, it was.” Nux still wouldn’t look at him, but Max put down the canteen and the fabrics, thinking maybe the war boy would understand that he had Max’s full attention.

 

“The Immortan.. He was like a dad. Told us stories about how he took the Citadel for us, made us strong with mother’s milk.”

 

Max set his jaw, wanting to interject with how much of a nasty bastard Joe was, but he had the feeling Nux was attempting to go somewhere with his words, and he didn’t want to interrupt in trepidation that the war boy might never finish his train of thought.

 

“But the more I see.. It’s the other way. People wanna stay alive- they’ll do anything for it, just to live a few more days.” Nux shook his head, and Max realized he wanted to comfort the boy, so he leaned forward slightly, resting his hand on the back of Nux’s head, fingers scratching through the slow-growing hair on the boy’s head, barely more than peach-fuzz.

 

Nux inhaled shakily, and Max was glad the boy wasn’t looking at him, because his eyes widened in alarm. Was Nux about to cry? Max wasn’t good when people cried, he hadn’t ever been good at handling that sort of thing even a little bit.

 

“I-Is it bad that I still feel like i’m supposed to die?” Nux’s voice was impossibly quiet, so low that the whisper of wind around them nearly drowned it out.

 

Max frowned, dragged his fingers from the kids head to his chin, prompting Nux to look up and meet his eyes.

 

Nux looked up warily, blue eyes gleaming unnatural bright, brimmed with unshed tears. Max inhaled, unsure of what to say. Yes! It was highly fucked up that Nux wanted to die. He was a boy, barely of manhood, and he was already so used to survival that it was of second nature to him, all because he’d been bred under the impression that he could not die until he was witnessed, that he had to do something great to enter Valhalla.

 

“It’s your choice.” Max said after a belated pause, and tried not to wince, actively aware that those weren’t quite the words he should be saying.

 

“Every man has to pick his own road, decide his own fate. We have to make hard decisions to take charge of our lives.”

 

Considering how much Max was driven to survive, he wasn’t exactly an expert on his reasoning behind it- for him it was just instinct, plain and simple, but for others.. Well, others had been bred differently.

 

Nux looked even more miserable than he had before, and Max hurried on.

 

“That.. That being said..” Max stumbled over his words, unused to having to spit out words before he had time to think about them, “Life in the desert is precious, and you are no less worthy of it than the warriors who have walked it before you.”

 

His words made Nux shift, and the boy looked uncomfortable for a moment, unable to meet Max’s eyes. Max caught something like a blush turning the boy’s chest a slightly darker shade of pink.

 

“Y’think so?” He asked, and Max nodded without hesitation.

 

“Yup.”

 

Nux still looked uncomfortable, and Max wondered if he had done something wrong, or if the boy just.. Oh. Nux probably wasn’t used to being told that he was worthy of much- Max didn’t like making assumptions, but he nursed the idea in the back of his mind. Joe had trained them to seek approval from him, but maybe Nux’s loyalties had shifted their alignment.

 

Max made a mental note to have another talk with Nux about that.

 

Nux leaned away slowly, seeming reluctant to pull from Max’s touch, and for a moment, Max fought the urge to lean forward and kiss the boy again, despite the lack of reasoning behind wanting to do it.

 

Instead Max pulled away, and Nux followed suit a moment later, sitting back to run a hand gingerly over the new wrappings on his leg before fastening his metal leg back into place. It still didn’t look comfortable, and Max knew that the boy took it off when he got the chance, but he assumed anything made of metal would be uncomfortable, turned burning hot from the sun.

 

“Nux.” Max said, and kept his eyes fixed on the orange sand under him, even when he felt the boy turn to look at him.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I’m glad you’re alive.”

 

Max’s awkward words earned him a sudden lap full of excited war boy, scarred lips pressing against his own happily. Max responded eagerly, curling his arms around the boy’s slim waist and kissing him back, peppering Nux’s face with small kisses until the war boy’s worried, nervous expression smoothed over and Nux began to laugh.

 

He pressed light kisses everywhere, Nux’s cheeks, his lips, his forehead, his temples, his lips, his jaw, his nose, his _lips_ , until Nux finally steadied his hands on either side of Max’s face and kissed him properly, reminding Max that despite their having only kissed a handful of times, Nux was an impressively fast learner.  

 


	8. More Than Mediocre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux's POV. *kill bill sirens playing in the distance*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the uber-late chapter, I got sidetracked and ended up writing this entirely on an archaic iPod. Go figure.

It was surprising, how long Max let them just sit there in the sand, doing nothing save for the occasional soft-spoken exchange of words.

Nux had had plenty of time to assess the older mans habits, between the War-Rig and the Charger. Nux even had a little list going in his gear-box brain; what made Max's lips turn up in that infrequent smile, what made him lapse into foreboding silence. Nux had learned a lot of it, but he couldn't figure out why Max seemed downright against getting back in the car. Nux hadn't asked, of course, sick-worried that he might interrupt the dream-like haze that accompanied their quiet moment. At first, Nux thought it only struck him as dreamy because the warmth of the sand mixed with Max's strong, engine-patter voice made him feel drowsy and comfortable, but the longer time stretched, the more he realized it wasn't just him who had felt different.

The dark clouds that had been following them for the past few days -or maybe, Nux realized, they had been following the clouds- had fully gathered themselves up, no longer pale gray but instead a damning shade of purple. The electricity flowing through the air was there as well; Nux could feel the engine-grease black hair that had begun to grow back on his head standing on end. It didn't take no time after that for Nux to understand that Max hadn't been wasting time at all, he had been waiting.

The clouds made everything contrast dizzingly from what Nux was used to. The sand no longer looked a violent orange, the Charger no longer glittered. Without the sun in his eyes, Max had stopped squinting so ferociously, forcing Nux to pause in his sudden intake of their surroundings to stare unabashedly at Max. They had stayed in the sand, slumping against each other until they ended up flopped out in the sand like pups, Max stretched out on his back and Nux on his side beside the older man. They weren't touching, the heat too much to bear _without_ another's body warmth, but Nux could swear to Valhalla he'd never felt closer to Max. Maybe that was just the salt getting to him.

Max was staring at the sky, half-lidded eyes giving the appearance of sleepiness, though Nux knew better; Max was wide awake, feigning for the sake of their comfortable moment- Nux could tell by the way the mans fingers kept twitching idly, the uneven inhales. Nux had to be observant, that was how he had survived the Citadel, how he had managed to grow up big and strong as the other War Boy's despite being constantly teased as the runt. With that instinct, Nux almost didn't realize how much he'd learned about Max, but even back on the war rig, Nux had already been observing, assessing, learning. Nux watched a muscle in Max's jaw jump, the man working to speak after having fallen into another lapse of silence.

"Rain's overdue."

Nux glanced up at the sky, trying to piece together what could translate to, but a glance above told him what Max had meant. The clouds were too dark, the near-constant rumbling of thunder to close to just be a shower.

They were looking at a storm, clean and simple. Before Nux could respond, Max was painfully clambering to his feet, a gleam in his eye that looked halfway annoyed, halfway excited. Then there was a hand outstretched in front of him, offering. With a grin, Nux took it, hauled himself up with Max's steady weight as an anchor, sand kicking out from under his mismatched feet. The weight on his bad leg ached, but Nux had long since learned to ignore the stabbing, lopsided muscles that hadn't quite adapted to his makeshift leg. Max slid into the drivers seat, and Nux clambered in opposite of him, clanging the door shut as he went.

The engine had long-since cooled, and as much as he liked laying comfortable with Max- they were both made for the road. It wasn't until Max threw a rifle into his lap that Nux realized Max's reason to suddenly start cranking the Charger- their mystery poachers from earlier had returned, this time with one less car. Nux felt a shiver run down his spine at the sight, remembering their last encounter. This was very different from their last appearance, however. Nux had no hopes of returning the experience Max had given him- the older man's face clearly showed that stony, resigned trepidation; too exhausted to really be scared, but unable to fight his own adrenaline down.

Max started the car roughly, and Nux noted that Max favored turning right rather than left, nurturing his bad hand as he drove. Nux knew he'd been doing it, but it hadn't mattered until it could be seen as a disadvantage. Nux had continued to worry over the older mans nerve-damaged hand, but Max seemed to have excluded it from himself, all but ignoring the fact that his hand wasn't working save for the occasional, angry curse at being unable to do something as easily as before.

The engine started good, and Max peeled away, tires tossing sand into the air behind the Charger as the four hostile vehicles closed in on their rear.

That was when the rain started. Three drops on the windshield, and then it was a harsh, stabbing downpour like Nux had never seen.

The cars caught up fast -too fast- and Nux reacted instinctually, glowing chrome under the fear and pressure of the situation that he had been thrown into. He slammed open the sun-roof cover with excitedly jittering hands, balancing one foot on the dashboard of the Charger while the other perched on top of the head rest on the seat- pushing his torso out the top window and raising the rifle Max had tossed him with a grin. This was what he had missed, the speed, the wind ripping across his clothes, rain soaking him down to the bone, forming puddles on every surface it could.

Max shouted something, muffled, that Nux couldn't hear from the wind.

Breathing steady, reckless but trained, Nux didn't bother settling the rifle back on his shoulder. He aimed wildly, low and long, going for the tires on their opposers cars.

They must have had bullet proof tires, because not a cap went out of place, not a damn cylinder wiggled.

Nux wished he had a lance. He'd always wanted to be promoted to driver back when he was throwing lances off the back of another War Boy's car, but at that moment, he wanted something sturdy and useful in his arms.

The wind felt like it was ripping his throat from his lungs as Nux aimed again, this time for the windshields; if he couldn't take out the vehicle, he'd take out its driver. It took six, steadied bullets to pierce the glass of one vehicle, and while Nux saw the driver slump and go down, the vehicle only veered off for a moment before another mystery opponent scrambled to take the corpses place.

That was when Nux realized it wasn't the wind making his throat burn- it was Larry and Barry, creeping up on him like rust in an exhaust. He coughed violently, forcing himself to stay on task until one of the cars began return fire, and less than a second after Max was dragging him back into the Charger by his belt. Everything was soaking wet, but Nux didn't have time to rejoice or rebuke the warm rain, too busy trying to maintain control over his windpipe.

Max was driving more than a little reckless, flatlands turning rocky and leaving the Charger with so much traction that Nux figured the man had to accommodate the sudden lack of loose sand, no longer drifting at every turn.

He hacked and coughed until tears joined the rain on his cheeks, his lungs burning for air and his throat raw and too small.

Through bleary eyes he tried to sit up, scrambling for anything more powerful than the rifle.

A crack and boom behind them made both Nux and Max jump, the Charger lurched forward on an unknown propulsion.

A car that had gotten close behind them was suddenly coming apart, fiery chunks flying through the air. A shard of metal impaled the back windshield, causing a good half of the glass to crack until it was impossible to see through.

Lightning. Lighting had hit the Immortan-forsaken car just behind them.

Max's shoulders were hunched, jaw set when Nux looked back at him, wide eyed. The elements had been a breath away from destroying them as well.

Still choking on Larry and Barry, Nux managed to root around in the back until his fingers closed around a boomer. Max must have seen what he grabbed, because the man hit his arm, barking a sharp 'nuh-uh' in strict negation to using the boomer.

"Bullets don't-" Nux coughed once, near gagging. "We gotta do something big, their engines are too good, either they gonna catch us or were gonna.." Nux gestures to the bomb in his hand.

"We're too close." Max said, but his eyes darted to glance at the cars behind him- he knew Nux's approximation of the situation had to be right.

"The buzzards may as well start tailin' us if I don't use it." Nux prompted. He wouldn't use the boomer without Max's permission, Valhalla must have cursed him when he crawled out of that War-Rig that he do everything the older man said; It was the only explanation Nux could think of, to explain how dearly he needed the mans approval, needed his instruction.

Well, that, and his crippling need to have an Immortan who might find him more than mediocre.

"Just-" Max grimaced, and Nux realized he had completely drowned out the reign if bullets hailing down around them. "Fuck, light em up!" Max suddenly growled, and Nux jumped at the command, ripping the pin out with his teeth and springing back up into the rain to hurl the boomer as far as he could, satisfaction making him grin like mad when the boomer landed just meters in front if the closest car.

Nux had to duck back inside the Charger when Max swerved hard, no doubt aiming to get away from the blast radius of the boomer.

They were to close.


End file.
